Bloomfield parents protesting plan for armed guards at grade schools

There was increased police presence at Bloomfield High School on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018 after a student posted a photograph of himself on social media while posing with a gun.
Matt Kadosh/NorthJersey.com

The $550,000 expenditure to add nine armed guards to the elementary schools will also fund an expansion of the school district’s contracted security services at the middle school and high school.

In this Sept. 7, 2016 photo, students and caregivers at Bloomfield's Brookdale School on the first day of classes.(Photo: NorthJersey.com File)

BLOOMFIELD — A group of parents is objecting to the Bloomfield School District’s plan to hire police officers to guard its elementary schools.

The district has long had sworn police officers at its middle school and high school in the form of school resource officers and plans to hire nine armed, Class III police officers – certain retired police certified to carry firearms – one for each of its nine elementary schools, school officials said.

The $550,000 expenditure to upgrade school security will also fund an expansion of the school district’s contracted security services at the middle school and high school, according to a presentation Schools Superintendent Salvatore Goncalves gave to the school board last month.

At Thursday's school board session, where several parents questioned the plan to place officers in schools, Goncalves said he would prepare a report on his recommendation for officers in the elementary schools.

"Placing somebody to accept visitors into the schools, and to have some process to control that has been a long ongoing discussion in light of more violence throughout the country," Goncalves said.

A petition posted online May 17 by people opposing the school district’s plan for armed officers at the elementary schools had garnered 141 signatures by Thursday evening. The petition calls on the school district to direct funding toward other security measures, which have yet to be implemented in all Bloomfield schools.

Melissa De Fino, the parent of an incoming kindergartner at Bloomfield’s Oakview School, counts herself among the members of Bloomfield Families for Sensible Safety, a group which objected to the plan for armed guards in the elementary schools.

“Panic buttons, cameras, having a single entrance policy with an unarmed guard, there are much simpler solutions that do not involve bringing a firearm into the schools around our children,” said De Fino, 37.

At the meeting, Board of Education President Jill Fischman argued the district would not serve the public's best interest if it fully disclosed its security measures.

"We can’t disclose every security measure that we have done because that would be foolish," Fischman said.

Noel Gatts, the mother of an incoming kindergartner and second-grader at Brookdale School, said she and other parents were caught by surprise that the district is considering armed guards but she is hopeful the district may change course.

Gatts said a Monday post by the Bloomfield Police Department seeking applicants for the positions caught her and other parents off guard.

“We feel surprised and blindsided, and we’re not getting a straight answer on whether this is a done deal. We’re continuing to make noise,” Gatts said.

Among the proponents of the district’s plan to expand armed officers to the elementary schools is Ciro A. Spina, the father of three children at Demarest School and a daughter, who graduated from Bloomfield High School.

“I’ve heard people complain: it’s going to make the schools like a prison. One police officer is not going to make it like a prison,” said Spina, 43. “What makes it like a prison is bad food, and not being able to leave: not one armed security officer.”

In this Jan. 3 2013 photo, Totowa Police Officer Gary Pontenzone greets student Schneider Altenor, then 11, at the Washington Park School in Totowa. Totowa's school district hired borough officers to stand guard on school days in the district's two elementary schools following the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Conn., in 2012.(Photo: Marko Georgiev/NorthJersey.com File)

The district plans to advertise formally for the positions this week, he said.

The officers will be paid $25 per hour, Dotoli said, which is less than what the district would have to pay a private security company for armed guards.

“The board recognizes that there are no perfect solutions,” Dotoli said. “But with an adequate provision of financial resources, it is looking at being preemptive.”

Dotoli said the plan had been discussed publicly in Bloomfield.

“The scrutiny and the interest in this are fairly precipitous,” he said. “However, the planning has been a few months in the making, obviously, following the tragic events in other school districts in our nation.”

Despite school officials describing the decision-making process as gradual, parents were surprised.

Bloomfield Schools Superintendent Salvatore Goncalves, left, and members of the Bloomfield Board of Education listen to the public on Thursday, May 24, 2018.(Photo: Matt Kadosh/Northjersey)

Armine Gallagher, 49, the mother of a Brookdale School second-grader, asked school officials to compare the district to those nearby, which do not have armed officers in their grade schools.

"A retired policeman could be a very friendly person, but the fact is that he is carrying a weapon," Gallagher said. "I wish the school district would look at other districts such as Glen Ridge and Montclair, and not Belleville and Nutley."